The present invention relates to the fields of electrical utility usage mitigation and optimization, designing and implementing power management systems for electrical utility customers, and related fields.
Today's electrical utility providers operate in a quickly changing environment with limited resources and little room for error. Power demands placed on the utility grid continuously and randomly fluctuate while the requirements necessary to satisfy these demands change on an hourly basis. Although hourly demands are somewhat predictable, utilities are expected to provide consistent and reliable power, regardless of what occurs in real time. Due to peaks in demand during the waking hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and during summer months, electricity providers contract with “peaking” power plants to receive energy for a limited time as needed to provide power when normal power plant production cannot match demand. Peaking plants are an expensive source of power, so electricity providers pass on some of the burden of the cost of that power by billing a “demand charge” to certain types of customers based on the magnitude of their highest recorded energy consumption rate during a billing period. This practice gives customers an incentive to avoid causing spikes in energy consumption, so that electricity providers reduce their dependence on additional peaking power plants to meet service capacity requirements. Minimizing consumption spikes also delays or makes obsolete the need to upgrade the electrical distribution infrastructure which is only implemented to compensate for periods of highest consumption.
In response to being billed for demand charges, customers have sought to develop inventive peak mitigation and load leveling methods to save money and make more efficient use of their electrical resources. Peak mitigation methods are designed to reduce or completely remove peaks in consumption, such as by turning off loads when peak conditions approach (i.e., “load shedding”) or by using power generation or energy storage to provide power to the site during peak periods, so that the peak power that is actually measured by the electrical provider is lower than it would otherwise be. Load leveling methods are designed to reduce loads during prolonged peak periods by discharging energy storage to supplement grid-provided power to a site, then to recharge the energy storage during off-peak periods to prepare for the next peak period, thereby “leveling” the overall consumption curve of the site and reducing demand charges. These methods are effective, but because they use expensive energy storage devices, generators, and associated hardware, they are typically designed to meet minimum requirements for the site. Furthermore, it can be difficult to determine whether a site is a good candidate for peak mitigation or load leveling without time-consuming electricity usage data monitoring and analysis.